Daniel Larison

Language, The First Casualty Of War

Posted by Daniel Larison on August 31, 2008

Missing from most of the commentary on the brief war in Georgia was any mention of the contorted use of language in Western news coverage and opinion writing.  While there have been some reasonable observers discussing the conflict in Georgia, most mainstream reporting and commentary have persistently described the conflict as the “rape" of Georgia in which its capital has been put under “siege” as part of a Russian expansionist effort (which is just part of a supposed pattern of Russian “expansionism”).  As it happened, even though Georgian infrastructure was unfortunately targeted during the week-long war, Georgia did not suffer much in the way of rapine and pillage when compared to other major campaigns in the last decade.  It is instructive to compare the damage wrought by the brief Russian incursion with the three-week bombing of Lebanon or the 78-day war against Serbia, since the extensive targeting of civilian infrastructure in the latter two conflicts began almost immediately and continued throughout.  Remarkably, the same military force that did lay waste to Chechnya acted with considerably greater restraint than either the IAF or NATO in their respective campaigns in recent years, but after a few days of fighting in Georgia Washington deemed the Russian response “disproportionate” when it had earlier memorably described the ruin of Lebanon as birth pangs of a new Middle East. 

Obviously, Tbilisi was never under siege in any but the most figurative of meanings, nor was there any Russian conquest of lands they did not already control earlier this month, which did not stop George Will from declaring the conflict to be Russia’s “war of European conquest.” Most common, of course, was the phrase “Russian aggression,” which was both imprecise in describing the escalation of hostilities and laughable when it came from the mouths of the most ardent defenders of multiple unprovoked invasions and bombing campaigns.  Most extraordinary was the deployment of the term expansionist, which reporters and pundits did not use to describe Georgian irredentism and Saakashvili’s efforts to retake territories lost to Tbilisi for over 15 years, but instead they used it to describe Russian military efforts to shore up the separatist regions that Moscow had been using as proxies in the region during the same period.  It seems quite common now to throw the labels revanchist and revisionist at Russia, when once again it was the Georgian government that was attempting to revise the status quo and engage in the very definition of revanchism, which is to take revenge for past humiliation and defeat.  The absurdity of applying the label expansionist to Russia was all the more clear when one considered that one of the most important proximate causes of the latest round of tensions in the Caucasus was the offer to expand NATO to include Georgia.  Naturally, Mr. Bush was on hand soon to declare that the “days of satellite states and spheres of influence are behind us,” by which he meant, of couse, that the days of other powers trying to undermine our satellite states and interfere in our sphere of influence were supposed to be at an end.

The issue here is not simply the use of double standards that change depending on the government waging the war, important as that may be, but the appalling abuse of language that takes place in the service of a party line.  The problem is familiar enough to critics of the distorting effects of ideology and propaganda, but it seems telling that very few Western observers even seem to be aware that most people in the West are participating in such distortions with abandon when it comes to Russia.  It is little wonder that Russia policy has been confused and dangerous for many years when most in the West cannot even call things by their proper names.


Comments

It’s too bad that the US didn’t bother to learn anything from dat ole debbil Churchill.  He was reasonable about allowing Stalin a reasonable sphere of influence and holding him to it.  The US thought that Uncle Joe was a real mellow dude until ca. Roosevelt’s death; then we decided that Godless Communism was about to conquer the world whenever Stalin had a paranoid twitch.  And here we go again.

One little detail is that, as I understand it, Stalin the Georgian set the Georgia-Russia border to Georgia’s advantage at the expense of those who wished to be on the Russian side of the line.  We might see what the people affected wish and then let Russia and Georgia settle things, urging that the wishes of the affected have something to do with the settlement.  But this hasn’t been the American way in living memory, so here we go again.

Reg- What Stalin was given was more than a reasonable sphere of influence, though in Churchill’s defense he did not want to give away any of Germany.  Even if we had to give away some of Eastern Europe, the former German and Austro-Hungarian Empires were outside Russia’s traditional sphere and giving away that territory was criminal.  But there is no sign that what Putin wants is more than Russia’s traditional sphere of influence, and if the Western powers recognized that sphere it would be easier to (among other things) tell him to stay there.

Mr. Larison,
The first misuse of language, was by the Russians, who having started the war by firing on Georgians, called the Georgian response “genocide” and war crimes.

Posted by RonL on Aug 31, 2008.

Click to flag this comment as abusive

Glad to hear from you again Dan, we miss you over at Eunomia

There is no doubt that the Russians have engaged in the same kind of propagandizing and exaggeration, and their charges of genocide in S. Ossetia were absurd on their face (just as our charges of genocide in Kosovo were).  In fact, I assume that the absurd charges of genocide were deployed more to mock NATO’s use of this pretext in Kosovo than to make a serious claim about Ossetians.  The abuse of language in discussing these matters goes back much earlier than Aug. 7-8, since a great number of Westerners have insisted on calling Saakashvili’s government democratic for years, even though it deserves that name only in the narrowest sense.  To the degree that Saakashvili’s government is democratic, so is Russia’s, but there isn’t much chance that we will be seeing many arguments along those lines.

Language and spin versus reality.
The humiliation of Germany after WW1 created the conditions that led to the III Reich.
The humiliation of Russia after the collapse of the USSR created the conditions for the rise of a Putin.
Today Medvedev stated 5 principles that represent Russia drawing a line in the sand:
They include:
1. Its a multilateral world.
2. Get the F...out of our neighborhood.
3. We want USSR’s sphere of influence back.
etc..
Bottom line This represents the end of “the end of history”
the end of “the new american century”
The S300 system in Syria and Iran, now that is a language the zionists and Cheney may understand, but on the other hand when was the last time they thought thru the consequences of their policies.....

Posted by Al on Aug 31, 2008.

Click to flag this comment as abusive

RonL is an obvious victim of the US Media disinformation campaign. I recommend Ron reads the independent foreign press or the report from the OSCE -certainly not a pawn of Russia-, which squarely put the blame on Georgia’s goverment and even alleges war crimes comitted by our “allies” there. Russia’s response was simply to save an innocent group of Ossetians from annihilation by the mad dog Sakaashvili and his neocon buddies there and here.

way to take note of George Will’s relapse into paranoid exaggeration syndrome, aka neo-conservatism. After sullying his byline in the run-up to the war, he sobered-up and started sounding like a real conservative. Guess he’s fallen off the wagon.

I’m quite happy to read something ‘sensé’ here even if it is incomplete. It is not only the disinformation and the abuse of language in the mainstream media that is deplorable but also the miss of interest of the dissident or alternative media to do a better enquire to what really happened in this latest conflict.  Putin for example, said some very interesting things about the direct involvement of the USA in the events in the Caucasus. A Russian general show a passport bearing the name of a American citizen, Michael Lee White from Texas, found in the rubles of a building in the capital of South Ossetia. From last week on, I’m trying to find something about it but nothing! Nothing in the mainstream media neither in the dissident one. Why? Isn’t interesting to now little bit more about the direct involvement of the Busch administration in the latest war?

Mr. Larison,
I am not going to defend Saakashvili’s regime. While it is better than its predecessor, it is certainly no liberal democracy. Russia did not call the attack on Ossetia genocide because on the NATO war on Serbia. It was a propganda attempt to justify war, one which it had been openly preparing for before the conflict. And Russian forces aided the Abkhaz in ethnically cleansing Georgians back in 1993, so blaming our misdeeds in the Balkans is crude propaganda meant to dupe westerners.

Werner Hoermann,
I am not a victim of American or Western media, all of which parroted the Kremlin line for the first few days. As for the OSCE report, it has not been formally released yet, so how can I comment?
However since there were no massacres of Ossetians and since Russian allowed Ossetians, Abkhazians, Cossacks and Chechens paramilitary forces to ethnically cleanse Georgians, Russian humanitarianism is a sick joke.

Al,

Russia has been supporting Iran’s nuclear program for years. Russia has been selling the Iranians enrichment equipment, nuclear cores, and weapons for years. The S-300 missiles sale is just a continuation of a policy to drive up oil and natural gas prices, and divide Caspian energy sources.
A KGB officer, who still shills for Stalin, and is driven by
revanchism and greed should not be viewed merely in terms of US policy.
Whether the KGB thug was Primakov in 1995 or Putin from 1999, Russia has been run by communist Russian intelligence officers complicit with Islamist terror before the fall of the USSR.

Posted by RonL on Sep 01, 2008.

Click to flag this comment as abusive

RonL:
I apologize, you were not a victim of the media’s disinformation campaign. You are part of it. Your real colors come through, when you try to sneak in a connection between Russia and Islamist terrorism. “If it is said often enough, some people will believe it”. Worked with the Saddam - Osama connection.

“The first misuse of language, was by the Russians, who having started the war by firing on Georgians, called the Georgian response ‘genocide’ and war crimes.”

RonL, do you have any references to support that assertion?

Posted by inibo on Sep 01, 2008.

Click to flag this comment as abusive

“who having started the war by firing on Georgians,”

I was under the impression that the conflict started with an attack by the Georgian military on the break-away province of South Ossetia.

Posted by G.S. on Sep 01, 2008.

Click to flag this comment as abusive

“We are all Georgians!” -meaning we are all rancid and corrupt liars who promote aggression wars for a buck- was probably the only true state circulated in the Western press regarding this war. If the phrase ‘full spectrum dominance’ was restricted in its meaning to the Western presstitutes, it would be strictly correct, and not a figment of the mendacious neocon megalomania.

I meant “...the only true statement...”

Ron. L:
Your comments show you are the appropriate chice to represent the stupidist f***ing guys on the planet.
Do you realize that the policies being pursued by the neocons have done more damage to the U.S. and Israel’s strategic strengths than anything the russians or the islamofabs could do?
Keep up the “goodwork” as you watch the dreams of empire and unipolar world go up in smoke and disappear over the horizon.
If Putin is a KGB agent he is atkleast working for an organization that is trying to further Russia’s interests and right now he has Israel by the B*lls.
Our leaders on the other hand are managed by the neocons whose philosophy is destroying everything the U.S holds sacred.
If you look at the biographies of the neocons you will realise they are mostly germans or poles or russians who still haven’t learn’t how to speak with an american accent.. what mkes you think that a pilosophy borne out of their frame of reference (trotsky and Hitler) is anything but evil and guaranteed to infect the U.S with a cancer long after the ugly little project in the middle east has disappeared and forgotten in the cesspool of histories unspeakable evils..

Posted by Al on Sep 01, 2008.

Click to flag this comment as abusive

Al, you mean a cabal of Germans, Poles and Russians who revere Trotsky and Hitler have taken over the US Government?

And how are they called, exactly?

Neo-Three-National-Bolcheviks? Or perhaps Neo-Holly-Alliancists?

Max:

How about: Five star clowns who are determined to give the whole circus away, big tent and all!
The just gave much of Georgia to Russia, Gave an excuse to Russia to train nukes on Poland, and gave Russia an excuse to lay out the 5 priniples that are a clear stament that the cold war is back and that Russia considers itself a superpower just like the USSR.
Next watch what happens to Ukraine.
Ron: If the Russians are doing this to raise the price of oil, they had plenty of help from the neocons whose invasion of Iraq and daily bluster against Iran has done more to treathen oil supplies than anything the KGB thought up. Do you begin to see how F==ing stupid these jerks are.
The best way to lower oil prices is to get the hell out of the middle east. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that each of the oil exporters depends on exporting oil to receive earnings to pay for their expenses. No oil exports no earnings. Iraq exported 6 million barrels a day before Gulf war 1. Now they export around 2 million.
We are paying Iran and Rusiia with our blood and treasure to banckrupt ourselves so that dumb neocons like Feith and Wolfwitz can really F**k things up...go figure

Posted by Al on Sep 01, 2008.

Click to flag this comment as abusive

BTW:

Apart from Russia, Iran and Venezuela, The other beneficiaries of high oil prices is the big oil cabal run by Cheney. High oil prices means bigger profits for Exxon, Capishe!
The other big beneficiaries are the big banks who have just wiped out all the equity we had in our homes. The are now speculating in oil futures to make some trading profits. They also qualify as five star clowns who recently gave the whole circus away in a Ponzy scheme that was designed to rob Cina and the other asian Tigers of their hard earned sovereign funds. The sub-primes which were designed to be offloaded to China ended up in their own greedy sweaty hands and they demonstrated once again their financial stupidity just like the neocons demonstrate their stretegic stupidity every given day.

Posted by Al on Sep 01, 2008.

Click to flag this comment as abusive

Oil is a decoy used by Russo-Germano-Poles from both the left like Chomsky, and from the right, like Greenspan. To understand US foreign policy, you’d better look deeper. If you check Oded Yinon’s 1982 “A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties”, you will see the strategic DNA that lead to the Pearl and Feith’s “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm” in 1996, and later to PNAC’s “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” in 2000.
Tommy Franks may have had an aesthetic and moral point in calling Feith the less evolved among the homo sapiens, but Gore Vidal has a sharper advice: if you think your rulers are good-willed but stupid, you err; they are neither.

By the way, RonL, are you Robert Loewenberg’s twin brother?

Max:

The Oded document just reaffirms how the neocons are bound up in the kind of philosophy described in Mein Kamph.

The problem for them is that they don’t seem to have learned from what eventuall happened to the Nazis.
For the numerically challanged, efeminate neocons to draw lines on the map is easy, however they lack the resources to make it happen.
That is why the U.S. was lured into this, and Iraq if you like was the first step in rolling out Zionist plan to dismember and fragment the arab states around them.
Their essential delusion is no different than the Nazis. They assume that the other side will not fight back.
They are so impotent that a few hundred fighters from Hezbollah were too much for their armoured columns to break through. Afirst in the history of military debacles.
Lebanon taught them nothing, now they are baiting Iran. They seem olivious to Putins recent statement at the Caspian conference that an attack on any country in the region would be viewed as an attack on all.
Unfortunately for all History keeps repeating itself, and just like the Nazis they are destined to keep biting off more than they can chew. They will keep going till they choke on their own venom.
I agree Oil is a decoy as are words like democracy and freedom, all a smokescreen to hide a very evil agenda.
The problem for them is, that like Hitler they underestimate the fact that the other guy does really want his “freedom” from you even if he has to prove it at Stalingard.
The delusion is mind boggling when you look at the size and population of Israel.  They are as deluded as the neocon Saakashvili. Theyn are truly clueless…

.

Posted by Al on Sep 01, 2008.

Click to flag this comment as abusive

Russia and Turkey are working together, trying to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.  Turkey, of course, is a major US ally.  Turkey and Russia agreed that Mikheil Saakashvili was crazy enough to start a world war. What was Dick Cheney’s deputy assistant doing in Georgia, days before Saakashvili launched the surprise attack in South Ossetia?

Israel’s insane smash-up of Lebanon in 2006 inflicted $7 billion in property damage.  Recently, Israel has been threatening to do it again, but even worse!

James Canning:
Let us stop deluding ourselves.
Russia and China are on Iran’s side.
Turkey refused the U.S. any help invading Iraq, they are much more likely to allay with Iran if we keep destabilising their neighborhood. They have recently been bombing the crap out of the Israeli fifth column in their neighborhood called the KUrdish....
If we persist on this Zionist plot we will see an allaince between Turkey, Iran and Pakistan at which point we would be well advised to put our heads between our knees and kiss our arses goodbye

Posted by Al on Sep 02, 2008.

Click to flag this comment as abusive

AL,

Your commentary on current events in the near east reflects my perceptions, and other’s, to a very large measure…

But your knowledge of Germany and WWII history approaches ZERO, as shown by the analogies and parables you use to illustrate your arguments.

H.F. Wolff

Condoleeza Rice, a purported “Russian Expert” was shepherded into the Bush Administration by Reagan Secretary of State George P Schultz and his Hoover Institute cronies. Before 9/11, there had always been a claque of power politics Think Tankers who pined for another Cold War. Terrorism was a distraction from this course but in the heightened atmosphere of fear surrounding this aborning Security State, they have assiduously pulled off a fine little provocation in Georgia and precipitated a renewed Cold War. Losing those freshly painted Humvees and brand spanking new arms to the occupying Russians was a minor embarrassment but not of much consequence given the paucity of information about it in the main line media.

Nothing could make the Security State Industries happier than a simultaneous War on Terror and a reborn Cold War. The USA was isolating itself in the Terror war and growing fears about Russia will insure that the NATO Block remains firmly in the American Camp.

Why look into the technological bonanza represented by the challenges of peak oil and climate dynamics when a good old fashioned war can work its charms?

This is neither a Republican nor a Democrat project. Though the Republicans appear to be the most swooning supporters, both are in it up to the gunwales. This election is not about change, it is all about selecting an executioner.

We’ve managed to sell off our industrial capacity and scuttle the dollar and so now these geniuses wish to go toe to toe with an oil enriched Russia. One wonders if the Nazis could have won the Battle of the Bulge if only they would have known how to run their tanks on French Fry oil.

I’m with RonL.

Russia has been fomenting discord between the Ossetians and the Georgians since the fall of the Soviet Union. Had Saakashvili not been there to take the bait, someone else would have been.

Medvedev is now in talks with the president of Transnistria, another legal black hole for the Russians. Look for Russia to “recognize their independence” before too long. Among the neo-con-obsessed, however, the Moldavans will be depicted as the aggressors.

The problem is that some of us here still have this antiquated notion that there is such a thing as Truth independent of subjective opinions. This of course goes very much against the core of America where:
- might makes right
- if you win in business or sports, whatever you did to win is good and true. Success/victory vindicates all.
- history is US/Israelo-centric.
- self-esteem requires that you stick to your guns no matter if you’ve been discovered as a liar or a criminal.
- the media operates like a single unicellular organism such that anyone with dissenting views is expelled and banished

Mr. Wolff:

I shall happy to stand corrected if you would be so kind as to describe which analogy or parable you find innacurate.

Al

Posted by Al on Sep 02, 2008.

Click to flag this comment as abusive

Al,

Respectfully submit that you do a little reading on your own.

Buchanan’s latest book is a good start, also the debate on why he wrote it.

The Germans / Nazis are used as an excuse for many stupid foreign policy decisions, as in “if we don’t do this now it will be just like appeasing Hitler / Munich”.

Problem is there was no appeasement, the British were merely buying time to re-arm.

Polish invasion: to stop the murder of up to 50,000 Germans by the Poles in formerly German lands. Even British diplomats wrote that this invasion was justified.

Invasion of Soviet Union: To beat Stalin to the punch as he had planned his invasion of Europe to begin almost exactly one month later.

Other “invasions”: Simply a re-possession of formerly German or Austrian lands.

The “treaty of Versailles” was nothing of the sort:  It was a diktat with the alternative being the starvation of the German people.

Of course one doesn’t learn this from the comic book version of history books/classes.

The Germans had their faults but they sure knew how to run a country when left to their own devices.

H.F. Wolff

Mr. Wolff:
I tend to agree with all your points. Poland may have been justified and constant references to “appeasement” are often wrong and used by people with hypocrytical intentions.
Some military strategists might argue that to deal with an assault from the Stalin, the Germans may have done better by waging a defensive war and not exposed their best to the Russian winter with long supply lines.

My point is different. My analogy goes to a freudian level if you like. The similarities are in philosophy not in the twists and turns of specific events or battles.
The analogies are:
1. Liebenstraum and “promised land”
2. Superior Aryan race and “Chosen People”
3. And you can go on whether it is tecnology or competence or bravery or Mossad is the “best”
Facts often show different.
My feeling is that The good folks of the exodus had no new ideas, they became like their oppressors, and tried to replicate “full spectrum dominance” with someone else’s money and resorces and people.
Each thought that with the right allainces and element of surprise they would destroy the other..it did not happen..That is why I tend to agree..History does repeat itself…

Posted by Al on Sep 03, 2008.

Click to flag this comment as abusive

Mr. Wolff:

BTW, I do agree the Germans are one of the most hard working, industrious and talented people on the planet, with a long history and many things they have contributed to the world, the fact that a deviant ideology took the worst of a 10 year period in German History and turned it into a 2,500 year old mission speaks to their own lack of originality and their own 2,500 years of social pathology and is no reflection on the German people.

Posted by Al on Sep 03, 2008.

Click to flag this comment as abusive

Al:

Thank you for a most thoughtful reply!

I think I understand the philosophical similarities that you describe, and they are indeed curious to say the least.

“BY way of deception thou shalt make war” is the motto of the Israeli secret service the MOSSAD.  I do not think it a great leap of faith to conclude from this that Zionists accuse their “enemies” of thoughts, words, and deeds of which they themselves are guilty.  They certainly quote snippets of Mein Kampf out of context, one of the famous ones being the “Big Lie”.

I have read some of Mein Kampf, more of a perusal really, and much is made of what is touted as Hitler’s plans of world domination and finding Lebensraum in the east.

This book was written while Hitler was imprisoned as a young man after WWI.  To conclude that this was a master plan of anything is stretching belief.  In any case Hitler’s later writings were quite conciliatory with Germany’s neighbours; he wrote that each nation should strive to be the best it could be for its people and circumstances.  He certainly reiterated in speech after speech that the way to an improved standard of living was through the work of “our own two hands”, with nary a word about conquests or invasions.

He also wrote that National Socialism was a philosophy applicable only to the German people ie. not exportable; that other people would have to define their own guiding principles.  Compare this thinking to that of the Communists and modern day USA!

I now believe that Hitler saw so much potential for Germany and its people that invasion and occupation of other countries would have been a waste of time and resources.  As evidence I provide this up-to-date fact: Germany is the world’s largest exporting country, having overtaken the USA 4 or 5 years ago.  This by a country with very few natural resources; most mines are played out after over 600 years of mining, etc. And yet…

In the near future it will be China’s turn, 1.4 billion people are hard to beat for production output.

The reason I carry on in this manner is that I believe it necessary to provide some balance to the western “comic book history” so beloved by Hollywood and taught in colleges. 

The National Socialists were actually quite progressive in numerous areas: Child protection, animal welfare, anti smoking, anti crime, preserving forests, etc. 

As one wag in Germany recently said: “Whats so bad about the Nazis?  You use their Autobahn every day.” This from popular TV personality who lost her job over this.

Unfortunately the demonization of Germans has gone so far that anyone who proposes any idea from Germany is immediately decried as a Nazi, and all debate stops with the stupidities continuing unabated.

What I find truly astounding is that until WWI Germany always had excellent relations with the USA.  The miscreants truly stole the agenda in the USA.

I wonder how it will all end.

H.F. Wolff

Mr. Wolff:
I will share a secret with you.
My favorite film is Das Boat because it captures some of the best human qualities that have enabled human survival, team work, right values, bravery and decency. I watch it every time I am feeling depressed and sorry for myself.
The point is that the people who are confronted with the Zionist Holacaust will need all those qualities to achieve success, for this is he one ideology that uses words like freedom and democracy to practise great evil.
The good news is that the rest of the world is more vigilant now than ever before, and each new plot they hatch brings them closer to nemesis, and in today’s world nemisis comes very fast.

Posted by Al on Sep 03, 2008.

Click to flag this comment as abusive

Another example: Georgia is in Asia!  Europe is seperated from Asia by the Caucasus, and Georgia is on the Asian side.

MCain can imitate Churchill’s defiant bellicosity “We will never surrender” but I question what if McCain or any leader chose to pursue such an option just who would they surrender to? Churchill’s enemies were functioning nations with which he could negotiate a truce or accept their surrender as later happened. But the present enemies the Bush family has given us are not a nation but a globally dispersed gang of religious zealots with no obvious single person leading it. steve, uSN, WW2

Posted by Steve on Sep 04, 2008.

Click to flag this comment as abusive

I am glad Mr.RonL that you still persist on old Nazi propaganda lie who started this war.It was Georgian’s using GRAD system on sleeping civilians guided by USA instructors.
And Yes as NATO in Serbia they had to interline but they had better maps of Georgia so they didn’t hit Chinese Embassy wit 5 cruse missiles.I guess they got the money selling the oil to USA.
Thanks the God we are not all brainwashed with CNN, FOX and McDonald
Regards from Canada lend of real beer

itis british led propaganda war but the world knows now that itis conspiracy of anglosaxon to loot the world.

Will We See The End Of Empire In Our Time?
By Richard C. Cook
5-28-8

The following is based on a talk given by the author at the “End of Empire” session of the “Building a New World” Conference of the Prout World Assembly at Radford University, Radford, Virginia, on May 22, 2008.

quote---


Hamilton and Jefferson split, and that split has defined U.S. politics ever since. Hamilton became the de facto head of the Federalist Party, the ancestor first of the Whigs and then of the Republicans. Jefferson called himself a Republican at first, then a Democratic-Republican, then finally his party became the Democratic Party that has lasted until today. Of course we know that the two parties have come more and more to resemble each other in recent decades in supporting policies of imperialism.

Jefferson was elected president in what was called the Civic Revolution of 1800. The first thing he did was cut military spending. He did what no one has done since, which was to balance the federal budget for eight consecutive years. Then he took an action which defined our nation to a considerable extent all the way into the 20th century. In 1803 he doubled the size of the nation overnight through the Louisiana Purchase.

So for the next century, instead of competing with the European nations for overseas colonies, our energies were devoted to settling the North American continent, to the detriment, of course, of the Native American peoples. We became, as did Russia in Eurasia and Brazil in South America, a continental land power. And we stayed that way for over a century.

But empire finally caught up with us. Across the sea in South Africa a man named Cecil Rhodes was devising a plan to make the British Empire the ruler of the globe. He created a secret society to accomplish this, called the Round Table, using money provided by the Rothschild family, who had controlled the British economy since the Napoleonic wars.

The U.S. was integral to their plans. Following is the relevant passage from Cecil Rhodes’ will of 1877. His aims, he wrote in the will, were:

The extension of British rule throughout the world, the perfecting of a system of emigration from the United Kingdom and of colonization by British subjects of all lands wherein the means of livelihood are attainable by energy, labour, and enterprise,the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of a British Empire, the consolidation of the whole Empire, the inauguration of a system of Colonial Representation in the Imperial Parliament which may to tend to weld together the disjointed members of the Empire, and finally the production of so great a power as to hereafter render wars impossible and promote the best interests of humanity.

Think about that: “the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of the British Empire.” In fact, as Professor Carroll Quigley made clear in his celebrated book, The Anglo-American Establishment, the British planners, whose descendants still rule that nation, acknowledged that a time would come when the U.S. would be the senior partner in the empire, which is exactly what happened over the century that lay ahead.

The Russian writer P.D. Ouspensky said all the history you read about in the history books is “the history of crime.” This is what he was talking about.
The takeover of America was accomplished when the British, European, and American bankers created the Federal Reserve System in 1913. That year our nation was hijacked. Congressman Charles Lindbergh, father of the future aviator, called it “the legislative crime of the ages.”

The Federal Reserve is a privately-owned central banking system modeled on the Bank of England. >From that day onward we got all the accoutrements of empire which have burdened our nation ever since: an enormous national debt, a crushing tax burden, permanent inflation, constant warfare, a gigantic and overweening military-industrial complex, a national character marked by arrogance and violence, and today, the enmity of the world.

Our wealth has been based, first, of course, on our own industriousness and natural resources-a positive-but, when that has proved insufficient, on taking it from others. Until recently our businesses and industry have dominated the globe-ever since World War II. The American dollar has been the world’s reserve currency and the denominator of trade in the “black gold” known as oil.

Through the neocolonialist institution known as the International Monetary Fund, we dominated the economies of the developing world. And we backed up our hegemony with military might. Since the start of World War II in 1941 we have been at war with somebody, either overtly or covertly, continuously. This pattern of warfare accelerated with the Reagan Doctrine of fighting proxy wars starting in the 1980s.”
===================================================================
Economists cannot understand this straightforward analysis, because economists, like neoconservatives, are not reality-based. Economists are governed by the illusion that America’s post World War II prosperity is based on free trade. It is not. America’s post-war prosperity was based on the destruction of the economic capability of the rest of the world by World War II and communism/socialism.

America was prosperous in its trade, because no one else could produce anything.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at:

========================================================

Zbigniew Brzezinski revealed a hidden Fact that on July 3, 1979, unknown to the public and American Congress that President Jimmy Carter secretly authorized $500 million to create an international terrorist movement that would spread Islamic fundamentalism in Central Asia and “de-stabilize” the Soviet Union…
The CIA called this Operation Cyclone and in the following years poured $4 billion into setting up Islamic training schools in Pakistan (Taliban means “student").

These people were sent to the CIA’s spy training camp in Virginia, where future members of al-Qaeda were taught “sabotage skills” - terrorism.
Others were recruited at an Islamic school in Brooklyn, New York, In Pakistan; they were directed by British MI6 officers and trained by the SAS.

As America teetered on the brink of entering World War II, Charles A. Lindbergh gave a fateful speech that did more damage to the America First movement for peace than all the propagandistic efforts of the pro-war groups he named in Des Moines that day. In his oration, the great aviator and American hero sought to define who and what had brought us to the point of no return:

“The three most important groups who have been pressing this country toward war are the British, the Jewish, and the Roosevelt administration.

“Behind these groups, but of lesser importance, are a number of capitalists, Anglophiles, and intellectuals who believe that the future of mankind depends upon the domination of the British empire. Add to these the Communistic groups who were opposed to intervention until a few weeks ago, and I believe I have named the major war agitators in this country.”

may 25th, 2007.  http://www.larouchepac.com/

LaRouche on Russian TV: “British Empire” Determined to have a war with Russia, China and India

May 25 (LPAC)--The impact of Lyndon LaRouche’s visit to Moscow last week is still being felt, with repeat broadcasts of LaRouche’s interview in Moscow May 16, to the economist Mikhail Khazin, host of the “A+ in Economics” weekly program on the Spas Channel, a satellite TV station linked with the Russian Orthodox Church. The interview first aired on Friday, May 18, and was repeated several times.

With “showdowns” looming between the Anglo-American-Euro bloc at the United Nations and Russia and China over Iran, and possibly over Kosovo, LaRouche identified the real war danger as coming from the British Empire--as he has described it--targeting Russia, China and India. LaRouche said:

===================================================================

Posted by: Ydotheyhateus on Jul 16, 2008 8:28 AM

“”
There was a point in Afghanistan’s tortured history when the future looked bright, when a determined effort to lift the country and its people out of backward agrarian feudalism almost succeeded.

It began with the formation of the communist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) back in the sixties, which opposed the autocratic rule of King Zahir Shar. The growth in popularity of the PDPA eventually led to them taking control of the country in 1978, after a coup removed the former Kings’ cousin, Mohammed Daud, from power.

The coup enjoyed popular support in the towns and cities, evidenced in reports carried in US newspapers. The Wall Street Journal, no friend of revolutionary movements, reported at the time that ‘150,000 persons marched to honour the new flagthe participants appeared genuinely enthusiastic.’ The Washington Post reported that ‘Afghan loyalty to the government can scarcely be questioned.

Upon taking power, the new government introduced a program of reforms designed to abolish feudal power in the countryside, guarantee freedom of religion, along with equal rights for women and ethnic minorities. Thousands of prisoners under the old regime were set free and police files burned in a gesture designed to emphasise an end to repression. In the poorest parts of Afghanistan, where life expectancy was 35 years, where infant mortality was one in three, free medical care was provided. In addition, a mass literacy campaign was undertaken, desperately needed in a society in which ninety percent of the population could neither read nor write.

The resulting rate of progress was staggering. By the late 1980s half of all university students in Afghanistan were women, and women made up 40 percent of the country’s doctors, 70 percent of its teachers, and 30 percent of its civil servants. In John Pilger’s ‘New Rulers Of The World’ (Verso, 2002), he relates the memory of the period through the eyes of an Afghan woman, Saira Noorani, a female surgeon who escaped the Taliban in 2001. She said: “Every girl could go to high school and university. We could go where we wanted and wear what we liked. We used to go to cafes and the cinema to see the latest Indian movies. It all started to go wrong when the mujaheddin started winning. They used to kill teachers and burn schools. It was sad to think that these were the people the West had supported.”

Under the pretext that the Afghan government was a Soviet puppet, which was false, the then Carter Administration authorised the covert funding of opposition tribal groups, whose traditional feudal existence had come under attack with these reforms. An initial $500 million was allocated, money used to arm and train the rebels in the art in secret camps set up specifically for the task across the border in Pakistan. This opposition came to be known as the mujaheddin, and so began a campaign of murder and terror which, six months later, resulted in the Afghan government in Kabul requesting the help of the Soviet Union, resulting in an ill-fated military intervention which ended ten years later in an ignominious retreat of Soviet military forces and the descent of Afghanistan into the abyss of religious intolerance, abject poverty, warlordism and violence that has plagued the country ever since.

Brzezinski confirms: “Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.”
“”
=========================================================

Russia need to target one and only one country-the real villain-england.

4th June, 2007.

President putin is wrong when he says that russia should or will target the missile on europe if america goes with anti missile defence plan in Europe.
Russia must target (rather than should) the nuclear missiles with multiple war heads against all the cities, towns and big villages( including military instalations) of england because this cold war -like the one before- is being started by england for the benefit of english race only-.it is race war between the english parasite race versus the rest of the world-the sooner the rest of the world realizes that better it is for the world.
look how germany wes villified soon after fall of soviet union-look how russia is being vilified immediately after Putin made russia strong.
look how american has been isntagated for perpetaul awar by the british bastards. Aritish spy naill faergussan and huntingtosn go to usa and preach hatred and racial inflammmatory speech telling americans that the time for religious and civilization war has come-why do these english bastards not figtht their war by thier own means rather than on shoulders of american arms?
say even if russia destroys usa then if britian or rather england is allowed to exist then the english parastic dog race will ,by very parasitic nature, will try to disrupt russia or other countries’ existence. therefore instead of attacking usa or poland it is best policy of russia to attrack and destroy to the whole of england which must be evaporated to a rubble.
thse same british bastards talking of religious(chrisitan and muslim ) war propagandasie hispanics, iriash , ger,ams , french as not in american chritisan groups. they also do not think those white europeans to be thier kind which desreves to be in america-such is the evil propaganda of british spies inside america.  .
poland is nothing but a proxy for the british bastards.In fact poland and other east europeans were taken in hurriedly in E. U. only by the insistence of the british because british wanted to dilute the core group of europe that is france and germany ‘s influnce and make EU just an appendage of angloamerican power structure while in fact europe was started as a counter to angloamerican influnce-what a reversal of role!
it is no use targetting poland -target the main villain which is england and the english race which m ust be aniihilated fromt the face of the world.